Tidewater Estates: Judge orders mediation in foreclosure case

April 25, 2012|By Paul Owers, Sun Sentinel

Residents of Tidewater Estates mobile home park in Deerfield Beach will get the chance to negotiate with the lender to resolve their foreclosure case.

A Broward County judge on Wednesday ordered mediation between the homeowners and U.S. Bank, which filed for foreclosure in 2010. Attorneys for Tidewater say they’ve had meetings with the mortgage servicer but never U.S. Bank, the plaintiff in the case.

An attorney for the bank was asking Broward Circuit Judge Michele Towbin Singer to set a date for the foreclosure sale.

“If Tidewater thinks it would be helpful to have someone from U.S. Bank be there, why not do it?” Towbin Singer said.

About a dozen residents of the 55-and-over community attended the hearing in the judge’s chambers.

“It’s almost like she sympathized with us,” said Anna McAnespie, 66. “I’ve never gotten that feeling from her before.”

In 2005, when the park's then-owner announced plans to sell to a developer, residents scrambled to form a co-op and take out mortgages to buy the park for $11.3 million.

By 2009, though, the co-op struggled to keep up with the $60,000 monthly payments and defaulted on the loan the following year.